Anglican Communion News Service

Over 30 registrations have already been received from delegates of Anglican/Episcopal colleges/universities all over the world to come to University of the South (Sewanee, TN, USA) for the next Triennial Conference of The Colleges and Universities of the Anglican Communion (CUAC) to be held this coming May 22-25.

 

There are about 130 member institutions around the Anglican Communion, and generally about 100 or so delegates travel to these international gatherings. This will be the 7th such meeting, and the first to be held in the United States.  Other meetings have been held in Japan, India, Hong Kong, Canada, and Great Britain.

Of key importance in these gatherings is for administrative heads, faculty, chaplains and students to meet colleagues from around the world. Almost all experience being in somewhat of a minority position as church-related institutions of higher education in their respective countries and cultures. Their immediate colleagues are, of course, from the secular higher education institutions of their country, many of whom would see no purpose in a college or university being related to a faith tradition.

Most church colleges were created during colonial days, as often of the first colleges in their country/community, although in England they specifically encompass those institutions formed during the 1840’s when the Church of England established parochial schools and therefore developed church colleges to train its teachers.

But most of colleges world-wide have long surpassed their founding mandate by becoming higher education institutions in a variety of fields, from arts, sciences, nursing and social work to medical colleges, and institutes of engineering and technology. More recently Anglican universities are being developed in Tanzania, Brazil, and the Solomon Islands.

Every Triennial Conference focuses on a particular theme, and the one chosen for 2011 is Sustainability: a New Context for Higher Education. This is a relatively new topic to engage governments and societies alike, and therefore must be a topic for education in general. For a Christian, sustainability means the responsibility and care for God’s creation, but in modern secular thinking it means the need to foresee human needs, and ensure that all the resources of the earth are conserved and shared equitably to meet them, both now and for future generations. So sustainability as a real concern is shared by believers and non-believers alike – and with similar urgency.

One of the key Plenary Speakers at the conference will be Professor Kwok Pui-Lan, an Anglican theologian from Hong Kong who is currently teaching at the Episcopal Divinity School of Cambridge. Mass. Her field is post-colonial theology, and she will be trying to bridge Sustainability from both a theological (belief) and philosophical (secular) point of view. There will be many presentations from member institutions as to how they are approaching sustainability both within their culture, and also as a framework for their teaching at the university. Some of the Faculty of University of the South will make a survey presentation of much of current thinking on sustainability within specific academic disciplines, and will also showcase some of the projects they have developed to teach and live sustainability at Sewanee.

The conference is meant for the constituency of Anglican church colleges world-wide, but interested observers are always welcome. Details of the conference can be found online at: http://cuac.anglicancommunion.org